PNC Field offers chance for change

DONNIE COLLINS, COMMENTARY
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Published: March 31, 2013

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That buzzing sound. Covered hundreds of games at that place. Saw some of the best young Phillies ever - Utley, Howard, Rollins, Hamels - and some pretty good Yankees, too, cut their teeth there. Wrote about many of the most exciting professional baseball games ever played in my hometown from its press box. Finished my first-ever New York Times crossword puzzle inside the old Red Barons clubhouse with Marc Bombard's valuable assistance.

But my last memory at the old PNC Field came from that buzzing sound.

Labor Day, 2011. I barely even tried to convince my wife and kids to buy tickets for the game that night. To see the last ballgame ever played in a place that once meant so much to so many but somehow didn't seem to anymore.

They made other plans instead. I waited, in the darkness and the drizzle, underneath the overhang at the old ticket office. One of those cars I could hear cruising in the distance on Intestate 81 had to be my ride, which meant my time at the old yard was growing short. That buzzing sound from one of the long white light bulbs flickering above me is all I had to keep me company.

Initially, I didn't understand why those moments were the ones I've kept closest to me in the last 19 months.

I do now.

They started to become clear with each trip to monitor progress of the renovations at the new PNC Field, where it is obvious what a state-of-the-art facility should look like, feel like, act like.

The old place, from the top of the upper deck to the broom closets in the clubhouses, was nothing more than a million little buzzing, flickering lights. Things that needed to be turned a little, tweaked just a bit, or removed and replaced altogether to work the way successful baseball franchises should have demanded. Left alone to fester, to annoy, to distract.

It wasn't always that way there, of course. But the sellouts during the glory days in the early 1990s were few and far between by the end. Crowds were announced at a couple thousand per night in 2011, and in reality, anybody there could tell you it was more like a couple hundred. PNC Field became an afterthought in the community, a ghost town on game night.

Change needed to come, long before Lackawanna County actually secured the funding for the $43.3 million renovation project. But the updated ballpark is only part of the baseball renaissance you'll begin to see Thursday, when the rebranded Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders and their new home debut against the Pawtucket Red Sox.

Certainly, many area residents will take any chance they can this year to question that assertion. This is not an area that has money to burn, they'll point out. This was not a stadium that by most measures should have been considered old. Tax dollars had just been poured into replacing the playing surface and a drainage system, building a pristine home clubhouse and, only a few years before, a party deck that went up in left field. And on every count, they're correct.

But PNC Field, long before Labor Day 2011, was dead, killed execution style by the two factors that have long been Scranton's bugaboo - gross mismanagement and overpowering cynicism. Baseball teams could have played there comfortably. But baseball had no chance to survive there, as a viable business, as an operation that could bring a sense of pride to its community. Not without drastic changes.

They're done now, with some manner of controversy and an even bigger level of excitement. But the combination leaves us heading into the unknown, with two questions needing to be asked.

Will the fans ever come back to see those changes?

Does this franchise, which erred so badly in its approach once, deserve another chance to change our minds?

The answer to the first question is yes. Unequivocally, yes.

You shouldn't need more evidence than what you got in February, when the team announced it already had sold 75 percent of the tickets it did during that dreadful 2011 campaign. That's long before single-game tickets went on sale in mid-March, and it stands to reason the club could wind up finishing in the top half of the International League in attendance.

Answering the second is a bit more challenging, because it gets to the heart of the issues that have plagued this franchise over the years. It's one leadership has to answer, and fans here haven't seen the fruits of effective leadership in a long time.

Former president and general manager Kristen Rose changed the way the team was run when she took over the job before the 2009 season. The franchise marketed baseball, which in defense of the franchise was about as good as it was anywhere in the league. But with that, the charm typically associated with minor league franchises left.

There were precious few giveaways. The experience became antiseptic, even grating over time. The few bells and whistles the old park did have weren't even used to better the fan experience. The scoreboard went years with glitches that didn't display the lineups or pitch speed correctly. The video board was turned off completely.

But nothing compared to the franchise's D-Day, when the field's drainage system failed and the franchise had to cancel several games - including one on sunny July 4, 2009. Angry fans got treated by their hometown team like a big league, corporate conglomerate would treat theirs. And for many, that was that.

"Things weren't good. There's no question about that," International League president Randy Mobley said. "I don't think there was any one person or group of individuals to blame for it. I think a whole lot of things contributed to the downward slide. What matters is what you do to turn around that downward slide."

Does this franchise, which erred so badly in its approach once, deserve another chance to change our minds?

It does, and that endorsement doesn't come lightly. It comes because your voices were heard. Not just sufficiently heard. Completely heard.

You complained about a disconnect with management. SWB Yankees LLC, the ownership group, brought in new management, fronted by the energetic, young president and general manager Rob Crain, who has spent the last eight months since his hiring immersing himself in the community, speaking to fans, peddling season tickets, engaging sponsors.

You complained about the name of the team. Well, the old one is gone. The RailRiders are in, and for sure, not everybody loves that name just yet. But the fans did pick it, and now, a Red Sox fan can go to PNC Field without thinking that they are rooting for the Yankees. Because even in name, this is not New York's team now.

You complained about the dramatic decrease in giveaways. This year, the franchise announced there will be 18, more than the team had in the last several seasons combined, and more than all but one IL team that has announced its promotions schedule.

You complained about a lack of atmosphere, or just a bad atmosphere, around the ballpark. This year, you get Star Wars Night and The Office Appreciation Night and Jimmy Buffett Night and dozens of other theme nights designed to appeal to every type of fan.

You complained about a sales staff that didn't do enough to draw you in. Now, you have one doing whatever it takes.

"Certainly, there are great expectations," Mobley said. "The worst fear is that they go through how many years of effort to get the ballpark renovated and changed around, then they don't change everything (about the experience) that is necessary. If you don't change everything that was wrong at the old ballpark, this can be a colossal failure.

"I think it's important for everyone to see this isn't the old team, the old franchise. If people come back, they try it, and they think it's still the same old thing, they're entitled to draw their own conclusions. But I don't think there's even a small chance they're going to find that to be the case."

To his credit, Crain refuses to pitch the RailRiders or the stadium or the fan experience as a finished product. It will be a constantly evolving one, changing with the times and experimenting with what works and what doesn't. He doesn't expect the RailRiders to peak in year one like the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees did. He believes it will get better and better, year after year. He sees no business philosophy that can't be changed, and won't be changed, if there is something out there that might be better.

In the end, that's the biggest change you'll see at PNC Field. The willingness to change.

Give this franchise another chance? Absolutely. It's yours now. The buzzing, flickering lights, the darkness and the drizzle, all met the wrecking ball. But the important thing is, so did the old ideals. And those are what drove people away in the first place.

DONNIE COLLINS covers the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com, read his blog at http://blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/railriders/, or follow him on Twitter @railridersTT

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